Flea markets in Germany are spread across event calendars, small organizer websites and social posts. Visitors had no single place to see what is on near them this weekend, and vendors and food trucks had no simple way to show where they will be next. The platform had to serve four very different groups — visitors, second-hand vendors, street-food traders and market organizers — each with their own tasks, plus a public community that needs moderation. It had to work in German and English, and it had to open with a full map of markets on day one instead of an empty one.
Marketplace & local events · Case study
Wakaway: a flea market and street-food marketplace for Germany
A bilingual web platform where people in Germany find flea markets, second-hand vendors and street food near them — with separate workspaces for vendors, food traders, market organizers and admins.
- Client
- Ismet
- Industry
- Marketplace & local events
- Year
- 2026
- Duration
- About 3 months
- Location
- Germany
We built Wakaway as a Next.js web app on a Node.js and MySQL API. • Discovery — search and a map of markets, vendors and street-food spots nearby, with categories, favorites and follows. • Role workspaces — dashboards and calendars for vendors, street-food traders and organizers; organizers publish and edit their own markets. • Community — posts, comments, likes and saves, with reports, a blocked-word list and user bans for moderators. • Direct messages between visitors, vendors and organizers, with in-app notifications. • Sign-in with an emailed verification code or Google, in German and English throughout. • A data pipeline that imports market listings, removes duplicates, geocodes them and uses AI to write descriptions and assign categories.
Results
- 5User rolesVisitors, vendors, street-food traders, organizers and admins — each with its own workspace.
- DE + ENLanguagesEvery screen and email in German and English.
- LiveStatusRunning in production at wakaway.de.
Five roles, one platform
Visitors, vendors, street-food traders, organizers and admins all use the same app, but each sees a different workspace. Vendors and food traders manage their profile, products and the markets they attend; organizers create markets and see who is coming; admins manage users, categories and markets. Access is checked on the server for every request, not only hidden in the interface.
A full map on launch day
A marketplace with no listings gives visitors no reason to return. We wrote an import pipeline that collects market listings, removes duplicates, adds map coordinates and images, and uses an AI model (Claude or OpenAI, switchable) to write a clean description and pick the right categories. Every imported market is validated before it reaches the database, and past markets are hidden automatically.
A community that stays friendly
Visitors can post, comment, like and save. Reports, a blocked-word filter and user bans give the moderators the tools to keep it useful, and notifications bring people back when someone replies or messages them.
From Flutter web to Next.js
The first version of the frontend was a Flutter web app. We rebuilt it route by route in Next.js — server-rendered pages that search engines can read and that load faster on phones — while keeping the same API, so nothing changed for existing users.
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